Trust
by denise1
Summary: In the wake of discovering humans are stealing from aliens, Jack thinks about that most important of things


Trust

by

Denise

"There were four men, dressed much like you. They carried weapons like yours. They came in the dead of night and stole the Touchstone."

Those words cause that queasy little feeling I'd gotten the second they started pointing those spears at us to double...heck triple in size.  Fortunately they let us go...in one piece thank you very much.

They trust us to find out who the thief is and return their property to them.  I wish I could share their trust.

We didn't have time to discuss what we'd just heard.  Oh Carter and Daniel tried.  But all I had to do was remind them there were twenty natives armed with bows and arrows who didn't like us much right now and that getting the hell outta Dodge was the thing to do. 

They didn't argue.

But the looks on their faces spoke volumes.  The only people on Earth who should be using the gate is us, the SGC. Our comrades, our friends.  A couple hundred soldiers, scientists, doctors, nurses, techs and let's not forget our cooks, mechanics and Ezra the janitor all united in a common cause, exploring the galaxy.

To do that you know, we have to be able to trust each other.

I trust Teal'c to watch my back. I trust Sam's calculations and doohickeys. I trust Daniel...to get into trouble even though trouble seems to have a homing beacon on him.

If we have problems, I trust Hammond to send us help.  I trust Harriman, Davis and even Graham Simmons to be on the ball and open the iris so we don't get splashed.  All too often we've had to trust Dr. Fraiser and Dr. Warner to figure what's wrong with us and put all the pieces back together.  And if Janet thinks she's getting anywhere near my knee with her scalpel she's got another thing coming.

I trust Ezra to keep the locker room stocked with clean towels...and believe me that can be just as important as the Sergeant in the armory keeping track of and maintaining the weapons we use to defend ourselves and this planet.

And I trust Hammond to shoot straight with me.  That was our deal after I came back from Chulak.  I know I should have simply been content to have a job, a purpose again. But during my short time back inside Cheyenne Mountain, I saw things I really didn't like and I wasn't planning to hang around too long.

George surprised me when he hunted me down in the middle of the chaos of setting up a facility.  He called  me to his office.  There he shocked me further by grabbing a partial bottle of Jack Daniels out of a half unpacked box sitting behind General West's...General Hammond's desk. 

He led me to the surface and up the mountain.  He climbs those rocky paths pretty good for a balding, portly two-star.  He sat down on a large flat rock that's become such a favorite perch for me and others here over the years.  It looks over Ft. Carson across the road and once you learn to ignore the lights and pollution of the near-by interstate highway, it offers a good view of the sky and stars.

We sat, drank and talked for hours.  George told me he'd read my file.  He knew most of my past, guess some of it is too classified for even him to know about.  I told him...well things I haven't told anyone else...ever.

He knew about Charlie's death, Sara leaving, my time spent as a guest of Saddam and I think a lot more he didn't say.

He told me about his wife's death, how he watched the moon landing from his father's bedside, about the two granddaughters he adored and didn't get to see near often enough.

About halfway through that bottle of whisky I told him the real reason I quit.  Charlie's death, as horrible as it was, was just the icing on a cake of nightmares.

I told him how, after my return from Iraq, all the weeks and months in hospitals and rehab, I found myself with two choices.  Stay in the military, accept their guilt motivated promotion and commendations or accept the promotion to Lt. Colonel, retire and restart my life with Sara. 

Three guesses which I chose.

Seemed half the Air Force brass were mightily impressed with the guy who'd managed to survive four months in an Iraqi prison.  Best of all, they didn't ask questions.  If I woke up with a nightmare...all I had to do was tell them the cause was classified and they'd back off.

It might have been a bit...lonely, but it was better than waking Sara up at 0200, screaming and thrashing, sweating so much I ruined our mattress.

One night, lost in a dream, I hit her.  Just a glancing blow, didn't even leave a mark, but it was enough to horrify me.  Figure this one out, I can kill a person in cold blood but the thought of having a woman, any woman, afraid of me is too much.

I moved into the spare room the next morning.  Charlie was the only reason I stayed.

So I threw myself into work.  I signed up for Black Ops, the more dangerous, the better.

During the next few years my team and I...we pulled things off that made Mission Impossible look like a Saturday morning kids show.

Mission Impossible...the secretary will disavow all knowledge. 

When I was young those words used to give me a thrill.  When I did Black Ops they just told me I was on my own.  Just me and my team, doing whatever we had to to get the job done.

Believe it or not, it's actually reassuring to not have to trust some paper-pusher, some desk jockey, to bail you out.  It was just me and my men.  If we got into trouble...we got ourselves out of it.

At first it was fine.  We got our orders and did our jobs.  No questions, no explanations.

Then the inevitable happened.  I'll admit it, I was good at my job...too good.  I made full colonel and now I found myself creeping up the ranks. I wasn't just doing the missions, I was planning them.  This was good and bad.  The other guys out there...well now they had someone planning their missions who actually knew what it was like, someone they could trust.

But I was now privy to why they were being asked to risk their lives.  Some of the reasons were good.  People's lives were saved.  Other times, we were asked to lay our lives on the line for nothing...bad intel sometimes meant we infiltrated behind enemy lines and busted into an empty building or tried to rescue a corpse.

As I got deeper and deeper into things I began to realize we were often doing things for...let's just say less than admirable reasons.  I discovered the nice black and white of Black Ops was getting distinctly gray.

I began to find out about convenient car accidents, defectors we'd liberated would disappear or show up dead.  The list goes on. The left hand slapping the right foot and all that.

The breaking point came one warm sunny September day.  My team and I slipped into one of those ex-Russian countries and 'liberated' a high powered person.  Once we got back to the states and handed over our charge, one of my team came to me, requesting a transfer.  I asked him why?  He was a good officer, a good man, he had a brilliant career ahead of him.  Why leave now?  Lt. Nick Wolinski asked me if I realized what we just did.  Who we just brought back.  I tell him I have absolutely no idea, nor do I care.  We got in, got our target and got out all in one piece. 

That's when he tells me. Our harmless little defector, the one we'd risked our lives to bring to America, home of apple pie, baseball and the Black Hawks, was also known as General Misha Koczynski, also known by the catchy little nickname 'The Butcher of Belo-Russia'.  Probably the one man in the world who makes Hitler look like a delinquent school boy.  Looking back this guy makes Apophis seem...not so bad.

What?  We didn't have enough serial killers and murderers of our own, we had to import them for crying out loud?

So I did what every good soldier shouldn't do.  I went to my CO, blindly believing he didn't know what we just did.  Oh imagine my shock and surprise when he tells me not only did he know exactly who we were retrieving, but the whole mission was his idea in the first place.

I was...well mad is an understatement.  Furious, incensed, angry, belligerent, fuming, outraged, riled, irate, hostile... Not even the thesaurus has enough words to adequately describe what I felt.

I stormed out, slamming doors all the way.  All the trust I'd let myself rebuild through the years shattered into more pieces than the blades of grass in my front yard.  I drove home, my mind not on the drive but on what I was going to do.  In the time it took me to change lanes I made up my mind.  I'd quit...retire.  See if Sara and Charlie could still stand to have me around.

I made it home and made love to my wife for the first time in years.  I asked her if we could start over?  I told her we'd be a family again...maybe make Charlie a little brother or sister.

But in my haste, my enthusiasm for a fresh start, I'd made a fatal error.  I'd broken routine in more ways than one. 

I'd forgotten to unload and lock up my gun. 

The same gun Charlie used to shoot himself with the next day.

So I quit.  I...I wondered what would have happened if I had come to my senses a few  months, weeks, heck hours earlier.  If I had just gotten smart a little sooner.  If I had just paid attention...locked up my gun like I always did... If I hadn't blindly trusted my 'superiors'...if I had just questioned earlier...If I'd just left Sara and Charlie rather than stringing them along for years.  If I hadn't been so greedy and let Charlie go...would I still have him.  If I'd just had the balls when I came back from Iraq to face my family instead of hiding, would things have ended differently?

It all boiled down to secrets.  I joined the Black Ops to keep my time in Iraq a secret.  Not talking became the way to go. 

And this Stargate was another secret. 

Recalled or not, and as cool as the whole thing was, I didn't want to be a part of another Black Ops.  I knew the US Government wouldn't be satisfied with us just exploring the galaxy.  They wouldn't give a damn about making friends or what transplanted Earth cultures we would come across.  Their reaction to the imagined threat from Abydos was proof enough of that.  I knew there was no convenient 'prime directive' here.  If we found something on the other side of the gate, they wouldn't be satisfied with us just bringing back reports or botanical samples.  They'd want the whole shooting match.  And what they couldn't 'acquire' they'd probably try to destroy.

Our, my government hates what it can't control.

"What's to stop them from using this gate to just take what they want?" I asked Hammond, taking a small slug from the bottle and handing it to him.

"What do you mean?" he asked as he accepted the bottle.

"Let's say we find some super weapon, some advanced tech., some El Dorado planet, what's to stop our government from just stepping in and taking whatever they want, regardless of the consequences?  I mean if the Goa'uld are any indication, there's a lot of good tech. out there."

"I am," George replied quietly but forcefully, punctuating his declaration by taking a drink and passing the bottle back to me.

"Well nothing personal sir, but I've certainly heard that one before," I shot back, taking the bottle knowing the alcohol was loosening my tongue a bit, but not quite caring.  Heck, I figured I'd be out of here in a few days anyway.

"Colonel O'Neill...Jack...that is NOT how I run my command," he replied, a note of steel entering his voice. "I don't lie to my people.  I don't play one side against the other.  And, without violating anyone's privacy, I don't keep secrets.  As long as I'm running the SGC, we won't traipse willy-nilly through the galaxy, stealing what we want with no respect for the natives."

"Promises, promises General," I replied flippantly.

"Son, I am not accustomed to having my integrity questioned," he shot back, bristling in the way only generals can.

"Well sir, with all due respect, if I've learned nothing else in the last few years, I've learned more people talk the talk than walk the walk."

"Jack, I don't want to see this gate abused either.  But I can't do it alone.  And I can't do it fighting my 2IC," George replied earnestly.

"Samuels?" I said, trying to keep the note of derision out of my voice.  The guy was a first class prick with colonel's eagles.  The list of asses he'd kissed must be as long as...

"Samuels is a sniveling, back-stabbing, bootlicker," George proclaimed bluntly. "If I'm going to keep this gate from being abused I need to have someone I trust watching my back.  Even I know better than to fight a war on two fronts.  Jack, I want you to help me run this place."

I sat there for a second, stunned by the offer.  The chance to go through the gate again, to explore, to see what's out there.  It was almost too good to be true.  "What about Samuels?" I asked, knowing this was the tip of a rather messy iceberg.

George snorted as he took the bottle from my grasp and tossed back a shot of the JD. "He's on his way back to whatever rock he crawled out from under.  So are as many of his cronies I could root out."

"And your plan sir?" I asked him, starting to like what I was hearing despite myself.

"Jack, maybe I've watched re-runs of Star Trek too many times, but I want to see what's out there...without turning us into intergalactic bullies.  From your reports, from what I've seen of the Goa'uld and what little I've heard from Teal'c, I think our only hope is to find us some allies.  We're in so deep here, I don't know how we'll keep our heads above water."

"And we can't do that if we're running around pissing people off," I said finishing his train of thought.

"You don't want to see the gate abused, neither do I.  And neither of us want this place to end up like so many commands we've been in before.  I want you to help me.  You run the teams, help me find some good people, chosen for skill and abilities NOT connections.  I'll run interference with the brass.  If we work together we can keep the SGC a place to be proud of," he said, conviction ringing in his voice.  He actually thought he could do it.

So I agreed.  George and I spent days closeted in his new office, poring over tons of records.  We chose the people for the SG teams.  People we either knew or had served with.  Men and women, Air Force and Marines, who had advanced through acts and deeds, not friends.  We even enlisted Carter's help, as irregular as that seems.  She knew a few scientists she'd worked with before, people of varied fields who could help us.

I found out Carter was second generation Air Force, daughter of a two star no less.  And Hammond was an old family friend.  That made me a bit leery to say the least.  Her very presence seemed to suggest she stood for what George and I were fighting against.  George assured me it wasn't that way, Sam was here because she was THE expert on our new toy.  Probably the only person on Earth who truly understood how the danged thing worked.  That and the fact she seemed almost embarrassed when I confronted her about who Dad was convinced me.  She seemed to be going out of her way to hide the fact.

For nearly two years we forged ahead, boldly going where no one had gone and all that.  We had our triumphs and tragedies and close calls...too many of the latter two.  Carter did her best to introduce women's lib on an intergalactic level, Daniel managed to make friends in the darndest places and Teal'c, well now that we got his family off Chulak I know he sleeps easier, meditates easier, whatever.

I was starting to think I'd finally found my home, the place I was going to stay until I really retired.  You know the retirement that comes with a gold watch and a party not like my previous attempt which consisted of me storming out with a 'screw you' lingering behind.

Then came Madrona. 

Roham telling us SGC people, our people, stole from them.  I didn't want to believe it but it had to be SGC.  No one else has access to a gate.  Someone I'd picked, I'd approved, was betraying us.  Not again.  How could someone sneak through the gate?  It's guarded 24/7 by armed Marines for crying out loud.  We don't leave our valuable stuff just lying around, unguarded like certain people whose names I won't mention. 

There's no way an outsider can infiltrate our gate.  They have to have help.  There has to be a traitor in our midst, at least four of them if Roham's information is correct.  And there is no freaking way they're doing it without Hammond's knowledge.  He guards that gate more vigilantly than a person watches their wallet at a kleptomaniac's convention.  Damnit!  Couldn't I ever find a CO I could trust?

I told Carter, Daniel and Teal'c not to say a word to anyone.  Let me talk to Hammond first.  The way the grapevine works around here, if they so much as whispered their suspicions to an airman, the whole base would know what was going on in 15 minutes, 10 if Lt. Clarke was on duty.  Maybe the old man forgot to tell me something.  Maybe...please God let that be the case.  I prefer a little senility to betrayal any day of the week.

When he met us in the gate room, he seemed surprised, even more so when I told him the Touchstone was missing.  Then again he was career military.  Hiding your true emotions is part of the job.

I followed him up to his office, not really wanting to have to do this.  He sat behind his desk and I closed the door, something I rarely did.  I really didn't want to be here.  The queasiness I first felt on Madrona had blossomed into a full blown case of dread.

"The Touchstone was stolen sir, by people wearing SGC uniforms.  They came and went through the Stargate," I stated.  Better to start this out directly.

"Who was it?" he asked, confusion on his broad face.

"Everyone involved here would like to know that sir," I replied, distrust creeping into my voice despite myself.

"I don't appreciate the implication Colonel.  Why would I send your team to study the thing if I knew it wasn't there?" he asked, pique coloring his voice.  Oh yeah, that integrity thing.

"No implication intended sir," I said, sensing that ticking him off wouldn't get me any closer to some answers. "Could any other of the SG Teams have gone through without your orders?" I asked him, giving him an out.  Come on George, don't do this to me.  I thought you were an honorable man.  I thought we really had something here, a command to be proud of.  Was it all for nothing?  A bit of hot air to calm the waters?  A convenient lie?  Was all your talk of high ideals just that, talk?  Are you no better than the rest, a two star thief?

"Not without my knowing about it," he declared, disbelief and something else I couldn't quite identify on his face.

"Yes sir.  Do you mind if Carter checks the dialing computer to see if there are any signs of anyone sneaking through the gate...covertly?  Behind your back as it were sir," I ask him, almost afraid to suggest what I'm suggesting, sincerely hoping he takes me up on the offer.

"Colonel, if anyone so much as sneezes in the gateroom I get a report on it," he insisted, shaking his head slightly as he struggled to make sense of it all.

"I understand sir," I reply quietly, as I turn to leave.  I knew it.  I'm more sad than angry this time.  What happened to make him cave into the vultures?  Just when did he sell us out?  Maybe it's about time I dust off that resignation I keep stashed in my bottom desk drawer.  Leave this place before all my illusions fall away.  Leave while I still have a little hope, a little trust left.  Leave while there is still a shadow of a doubt.

"Colonel," he calls after me quietly, "Have Carter check it anyway."

"Thank you sir.  Thank you," I respond with a small nod of my head.  I don't think I've felt this grateful since I saw Danny boy in the gateroom.  Maybe I wasn't wrong.  Maybe there are still honorable men left.  Maybe there is still hope, for me, for us all. 

fin


End file.
